THE BILLONAIRE'S REPLACEMENT BRIDE

Public Defense

Adrian had told her they had to attend The Golden gala to solidify her position as Mrs. Blackwood and shut down any news her father would spread. Still her hands couldn't stop trembling. The whispers started before they reached the top of the stairs.

Elena felt them like fingers on her spine. She held Adrian's arm because the contract demanded it, but her grip was too tight, her nails digging into his sleeve through the tailored wool.

"Smile," he murmured.

"I am."

"You're grimacing."

She forced her mouth to soften. The ballroom was gold and glass and too much light, every chandelier casting judgment on the woman who had been abandoned by one man and claimed by another in the same breath. She saw the looks.The women who leaned together, hands covering their mouths, eyes sliding toward her and away.

There she is. The Vale bride. The one Nathan Cross threw back.

Adrian's hand covered hers on his arm reassuringly.

They moved through the crowd like a blade through silk. Adrian nodded at men who mattered. He ignored everyone else. Elena kept her chin up and her eyes forward, counting the seconds until she could escape to the restroom and breathe without an audience.

Then the voice cut through the noise.

"Well, if it isn't the abandoned bride." It was bright and Carried on a laugh that turned heads.

Elena stopped. A woman stood near the champagne fountain...red hair, diamonds at her throat, a mouth painted into a permanent smirk. Elena didn't know her name. She only knew the type. The women who had watched her plan her wedding to Nathan with envy disguised as friendliness, who had sent gifts and attended fittings and stored every detail to use as ammunition later.

"Clara," someone hissed beside her, but Clara didn't stop.

"I heard Nathan couldn't even make it through the vows," she said, loud enough to carry. "Poor thing left at the altar, then scooped up by the first man with a checkbook. Tell me, Elena, do you actually remember Adrian's name? Or do you just call him not Nathan?"

The ballroom went quiet.

She opened her mouth to speak but Adrian spoke first.

"Clara Whitfield." His voice was quiet cutting through the silence like a wire through flesh. "Your husband is currently in Monaco with his third mistress this year. The first two received settlements. The third, I believe, is pregnant."

Clara's face went white.

Adrian didn't raise his voice. He didn't step closer. He simply looked at her with the same gray calm he brought to everything, and the look was worse than a shout. It was a man who knew where all the bodies were buried, and was willing to dig.

"Elena is my wife," he said. "not a woman you speak about as if she isn't standing right in front of you, wearing my name and my ring." He paused. "If you have a problem with that, you may take it up with me Privately. Though I should warn you, I don't forget the names of people who insult my family."

He turned to Elena. He lifted her hand from his arm slowly and deliberately, in front of everyone his lips to her knuckles.

The touch was soft. It lasted two seconds but the room saw it. "Are you alright?" he asked her.

Elena couldn't speak. Her throat was closed around something too large to swallow.

Adrian tucked her hand back into the crook of his arm. He didn't look at Clara again. He simply walked Elena through the crowd, and the crowd parted for them, silent and staring, the whispers dead before they could form.

In the hallway outside the ballroom, he released her.

"You can breathe now," he said.

Elena leaned against the wall. Her legs were shaking. Her heart was hammering in a place too high in her chest. "You didn't have to do that."

"Yes, I did."

"For the contract? For the performance?" She looked at him, searching his face for the mask, for the calculation, for the cold logic that governed everything he did. "Or because ...."

"I wouldn't stand there and watch my wife shrink yourself for people who aren't worth the dust on your shoes." He interrupted

Elena stared at him.

The words didn't sound like a husband protecting an investment. They sounded like a man defending something he had already decided was his.

"That felt real," she whispered.

Adrian's jaw tightened. He looked away, toward the ballroom where the music had started again, where Clara Whitfield was no doubt fleeing to the restroom to cry into her diamonds.

"It was real," he said quietly.

Then he walked back into the party, leaving Elena alone in the hallway to catch her breath